Before Versailles Read online

  He could have sent her ladies from the chamber and climbed into bed with her, whispering that ballad to her as his hands roamed her body, fill my joy in brimming measure, he could have said as he touched her, but he didn’t love her that way. He’d made this marriage out of duty and hoped that love would grow. And now he was beginning to understand it never would, not that he didn’t respect her—her nobility was of the highest—not that he didn’t like her. She was an obedient, pious wife. But he didn’t love her. The thought twisted his gut.

  Something drove him. Where? To whom? It seemed to him women were everywhere, following him with their eyes, curtsying to him, the tops of their breasts defined and soft above their tight bodices. Why didn’t he just take one of them and satisfy this need the way he had once done with Olympe? What was he longing for? Some spark? Some tenderness? Some depth to answer the depths in his own heart? Where was there a woman whose price for him was above rubies?

  “Write to his majesty the king of Spain and beg him to send young cup-of-gold cuttings. Tell him it would be a favor to me if his gardeners sent cuttings from vines that have grown under the windows her majesty once looked out from,” he told his secretary, never pausing in his restless stride. “From those vines only.”

  BRIEFLY SNEAKING AWAY from the flutter that was the dressing of her majesty, the sullen Olympe and the beauty, whose name was Athénaïs, leaned out opened windows in a nearby chamber to watch the king stalk through his courtyard.

  “Did you see him ignore me? I might as well not exist. I don’t think he likes me.” Athénaïs was truly astonished.

  “He’s ripe,” said Olympe. As the queen’s superintendent, she was an important figure at court. But her power was deeper than that. She was among those few whom Louis counted as true friends. And once upon a time, before his marriage, she’d been more than friendly with him in bed. “There is going to be a mistress soon. I can feel it. There’s something around him I sense, a heat.”

  “I wish it were me!” Athénaïs brought hands to her mouth as if she’d said something wrong. “Oh, I’m terrible. Not that I would yield; I’m saving myself for marriage, of course. But he is enthralling.”

  There was no dishonor in becoming a king’s mistress. In this, as in other things, the court was clear-eyed and unsentimental. It was longstanding tradition that there be one.

  You would yield, thought Olympe, with a sharp glance at the maid of honor, younger, fresher than she, but not by much. You would yield, and me, well, I have nothing to save. When he falls, and fall he will, he’s going to be mine.

  Chapter 2

  OUIS DISMISSED HIS COUNCIL AND WHISTLED FOR HIS DOGS. His valet said his favorite dog wasn’t acting in her usual manner, and he wanted to see for himself.

  “Belle,” he called and stroked her sleek head when she appeared, ahead of the pack, as always. “That’s my good girl. Are you sick, my sweet one, my mighty hunter?” He knelt on one knee to take her handsome head in his hands and examine her face. He could see nothing different.

  “Your majesty, just a word, if I might.”

  He started. He hadn’t realized he’d been followed. He kept his hands on Belle’s head a moment or two longer, his mood suddenly irritable. Business for this morning was over. This man who broke into his privacy could just as easily have spoken to him this afternoon, for he met with his council twice a day, in the mornings and in the late afternoon, had done so since the death of Cardinal Mazarin. Now was his time for pleasure; in his mind he was already atop his horse, riding to the river, to gaze on the guise pleasure had taken, lily-white skin, chestnut hair, an enchanting laugh. A king’s business is never over, he heard his beloved cardinal’s voice echo in his mind, so he stood and pretended that he hadn’t been caught murmuring to a dog by the one man he most wanted to impress.

  That man bowed. It was the Viscount Nicolas, his superintendent of finance, whom the court expected to become Louis’s chief minister. The treasury was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was one of the reasons why the viscount was so important. He kept the kingdom from tipping over into the abyss, had done so for years. He was a collector of taxes, a maker of loans, and, also, a maker of men.

  “Monsieur does me the honor to ask if I, in my humble way, might make a pleasing argument he be allowed a place at this council. Is there a time when I might make such appealing to you, your majesty?” As always, the viscount was suave and as smooth as honey.

  “A bribe,” asked Louis. “Are you attempting to buy me?”

  Nicolas blinked, then bowed low, his eyes on the floor. “How clumsy I am. I’ve offended, when all I wished to do was champion a man I think would add much to our governance. His highness, your brother, is your most loyal servant. I’ll say no more.” The viscount unbent and met Louis’s eyes. “Allow me to be of service in another way. I understand you are searching for cup-of-gold vines. It happens that I have some at my estate not far from here. They are yours.”

  Good God, thought Louis, how can he know that already?

  “I become clumsiness entirely,” Nicolas said as Louis’s silence lengthened. “This is not my morning, is it?”

  The viscount referred to an earlier, terse exchange about funds to rebuild the navy.

  But Louis laughed. If there was one attribute the viscount possessed—and he possessed many—it was charm. “You surprise me, viscount, that’s all. Can you read my mind? I was speaking of the vines only this morning.”

  “I assure you I am not omniscient. The Countess de Soissons was kind enough to tell me.”

  “Send every vine you have, then. I accept them with pleasure.”

  Nicolas smiled, as if he lived only to please his sovereign, and in spite of himself, Louis smiled back. I could like this man, he thought, but can I trust him?

  “My only wish is to serve you to the best of my talents,” the Viscount Nicolas said as if he had read that thought, too.

  Feeling awkward and graceless, Louis turned back to his dogs. He knew he should say something equally fulsome, such as how the viscount’s least talent was a treasure, but he just wanted to put distance between himself and this man, who seemed too smooth, too capable, too kind, and—was it simply pique on his part and how he hated that it might be—too certain of himself. It was as if he tolerated Louis’s whim to rule without a chief minister, all the while knowing such was impossible, that it was simply a matter of time before Louis realized it, too. That’s what the court was whispering behind his back. No one believed he could manage without a Mazarin.

  Gesturing that he wished no friends as companions, Louis walked not to his wife’s apartments but in another direction altogether, toward a quieter, less-used part of the palace. He passed through halls and unoccupied bedchambers and then through the silent ballroom an ancestor had built. It was a magnificent room, a long chamber with huge, wide, handsome bays on each side to let in light through floor-to-ceiling windowed doors with expensive and rare glass in them. Everywhere were the emblems of its builder-king, his letter “H” embossed and entwined, along with the “C” of his queen, but also the crescent moon of the goddess Diana—Diana, also the name of that king’s mistress. The large frescoes at one end were allegories of Diana also, Diana and the hunt, that king’s favorite things. Two huge bronze satyrs embellished each side of the enormous fireplace, the satyrs signifying lust, the lust that king had felt for a woman.

  Lust. Thou shalt not commit adultery. His heels clicked on the intricately patterned wooden floors. The scratch of his dogs’ nails against the floors was a comfort to his ears. He was on his way to an old, neglected chapel just on the other side of this ornate ballroom. No one used it anymore, there being a far grander one his father had built in another wing, but Louis liked this one. He felt hidden from the world in it. It had become too small for the size of the court, but it was right for him, for his need to have some time alone, some time away from others.

  A small, private door led directly into the chapel from here. Motioning to the lieu
tenant of his bodyguard to leave him, he stepped into the soothing dim of this quiet and sacred space, crossed himself and knelt, his eyes not seeing the stained-glass windows in a half-circle before him nor the gold-and-green gilded dome overhead. Why had he acted rudely to the viscount? Not only was it childish and impolite, but it showed his growing mistrust. Never let another know what you think. Was it possible that he could trust the man, if not completely, then more than he dared at the moment? Yes, said his mother. No, said something in him. So luscious Olympe was the spy in his wife’s household. Of course she would be. Was she the only one? The viscount’s knowledge of his conversation with the queen this morning disturbed. What else did he know? Did he know that Louis had begun to meet someone in secret every night in an attempt to understand finances? Did he know Louis would never, under any circumstances, give Philippe a place on the council? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor thy brother’s either. But he did, the Blessed Savior help him. He stopped that thought. It led to places wild and uncontrolled, to desires he shouldn’t have.

  He prayed for strength, but like a jeer to his prayer, the face of his brother’s wife came into his mind, along with a verse from a poet: As a rose, she lived as roses do. She’d worn rose-colored ribbons last night. He touched the one that was tied around his own wrist, hidden by lush lace at the end of his shirtsleeve that was the fashion. He’d stolen it like some thief in the night, like some besotted fool.

  “Henriette,” he whispered, and he repeated her name yet again into the silence around him. He didn’t wish to hurt his brother, and yet his brother’s happiness cut into him like a sword. Would he? Would she? It seemed she felt as he did. Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other, so said his mother’s beloved Spanish writer, Cervantes. Had Cervantes desired his brother’s wife? He prayed for the strength to resist temptation.

  Prayer finished, calm restored, at least until he should see Henriette again, he stood to leave and as he walked back toward the small door that had let him in, he caught sight of a white square, obviously slipped under the great front doors of the chapel, which opened from a hall.

  For a moment, his heart thudded. Had Henriette dared to write him? Did she accept or berate him for his almost kiss of last night? He felt like a boy, ready to leap to joy or plunge to despair. He picked up the letter, its paper heavy, grained, expensive, and tore past a plain seal of red wax.

  Do you know the difference

  between His Eminence

  and the late Cardinal Richelieu?

  The answer is not moot.

  The one led his animal.

  The other mounts his brute.

  Shock held him still. It was a Mazarinade, one of the hundreds of verses and street songs and written words full of scandal and hate that had filled pamphlets and letters, had been shouted from street corners in his boyhood, full of malevolence for the man who had been resented and feared and warred against and yet lived to be one of the saviors of France: Mazarin. Its subject was despicable and lurid, implying his mother was whore to a man who had deeply loved her. It was a dishonor to her and a dishonor to him, but worse, it was an all-too-vivid reminder of the uncertain past behind him and the uncertain future ahead. Peace was fragile. This little jibe reminded him too sharply of that. Beware, it said. Enough wrong moves, and the court would turn on him. They’d done it before. They could do it again.

  He wrenched open the front doors of the chapel and stepped into the hall. A musketeer, arms crossed, took his ease at the end of the hall’s long finger on Louis’s right.

  “Who came into this hallway?” Louis demanded.

  The musketeer stood up straight. “No one, your majesty.”

  Back in the chapel, Louis went to the small side door that led to the ballroom. He saw the lieutenant of his musketeers playing ball with the dogs. The lieutenant kept a ball from the tennis court in a pocket.

  “D’Artagnan,” Louis shouted, and the dogs turned at the sound of his voice, ran toward him, Belle in the lead.

  “There’s another. Down!” As the dogs obeyed, Louis held up the paper. D’Artagnan took the note from him and read it as Louis walked back into the dim of the chapel and through the wide doors to the hall. He stepped out. The musketeer had moved from his place far down at one end and waited for him.

  “I repeat, who came into this hall?”

  There were narrow staircases for servants with iron railings that circled up into the attic floors. There was a staircase in the pavilion at the end of this hall and a public staircase for the ballroom. And there were secret passages. Only he was supposed to know of them, but their existence was old. Many knew of them, more than he could imagine.

  “No one, your majesty. I swear it.”

  There was a thin sheen of perspiration on the musketeer’s upper lip, just above a small mustache, matching Louis’s, who’d made such the fashion.

  The note still in his hand, D’Artagnan and the dogs were in the hall now. Louis took the paper. His heart felt like it was going to jump right up his throat and out onto the floor. He felt sick to his stomach. He folded the paper into a small oblong and put it into a secret pocket in his jacket.

  “That would be the second, your majesty?”

  The even tone of D’Artagnan’s question calmed. Shutters were open to Fontainebleau’s forest-blessed air here in this wide hallway, and he took a deep breath of it. The day outlined in the window’s frame was clear, temperate, beautiful. Friends of his, seeing he had skipped Mass, were waiting for him in the courtyard.

  “Yes, the second. The first was while we were still at the Louvre.”

  “Did you leave your position?” D’Artagnan asked the musketeer.

  Sweat now rolling from his hair, the musketeer said, without looking at Louis, “I went into the Tiber pavilion for a moment.” The Tiber pavilion ended this wing of the palace.

  “Because?” D’Artagnan’s question was gentle.

  “A-a girl. We spoke only for a few moments, sir.”

  “Leave us,” ordered D’Artagnan.

  The musketeer walked back down the hall, feeling the weight of two sets of eyes on his back.

  “It might have happened then,” D’Artagnan said to Louis. Royal palaces were filled with servants, courtiers, priests, officials, visitors. Many chambers were reached only by passing through another chamber, and that included royal chambers. He indicated the plain winding stairs beside them. “Perhaps someone came down the stairs when he wasn’t watching, sire.”

  “This is my palace.” I sound shrill, thought Louis.

  D’Artagnan didn’t answer. He walked across to a window, looked out. There were musketeers stationed in this courtyard, the oval courtyard, the king’s personal courtyard, and there were Louis’s friends, Philippe’s, loitering, killing time until Louis joined them. It could have been anyone. The king’s grandfather had been killed by a man leaping into his coach. Guards riding near had been unable to prevent it. It was his task to prevent such.

  “I don’t like this, D’Artagnan.”

  “Nor do I, sire. But I’ll find our little messenger, and I’ll put a new man on duty.”

  Louis looked down toward the musketeer. From where he stood, the musketeer could feel the sear of the king’s eyes, and he swallowed and began to sweat again.

  “No.” Louis spoke softly, reflectively. “We’ll give him another chance. If he’s a good soldier, and as a musketeer, he is, it won’t happen again. I would imagine I’m safer than I was an hour ago.”

  Lieutenant Charles d’Artagnan of his majesty’s royal musketeers, over twenty years service of one kind or another, thank you very much, bowed stiffly and then watched the young king of France, all of twenty and two—D’Artagnan was twice the king’s age and what he’d seen in his time was a story in itself—take another deep inhale, then blow out its air. He watched his sovereign straighten shoulders and shake his head, as if clearing it. The king snapped his fingers
and his dogs rose from their sitting position. He knelt among them, patting their heads, receiving kisses, pulling ears. He said their names and grabbed one or another by the scruff, as they milled around him.

  “To me,” Louis ordered, and he walked away, dogs a circle around him.

  The only creatures he truly trusts, the king’s valet had been known to say when too far gone in drink, those dogs. A king’s role was a lonely one; he might be betrayed by wife, by councilor, by child, and most certainly, by courtiers. This one’s father had been. What memories D’Artagnan had of those old days before his present majesty was born and another cardinal ruled the day and betrayal grew in the bones of everyone. He leaned out the window and called to musketeers that the king was exiting at the Tiber pavilion. Then he took a rare moment away from Louis and stepped into the chapel, where many a king before this one had prayed. For what? Strength? Deliverance? Loyalty? Some glimmer of true love? Bring those he can trust into his life, D’Artagnan prayed. There have to be more than myself.

  And then the lieutenant of Louis’s musketeers began a methodical search of the chapel. The note might have already been here, just waiting, placed by someone who knew the king’s habits, where he liked to pray. There was a secret passage here down into the chamber below. D’Artagnan walked down secret stairs, opened a door set so skillfully into its surrounding wood that a maidservant dusting an armoire shrieked and would have fled if D’Artagnan hadn’t stopped her.

  “How long have you been here? Was anyone in this chamber when you entered it?”

  “Not long, sir. No one was here, sir.” She gulped her answers, her eyes big and blinking.

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” Tears were welling up.

  “Be gone with you, now, and not a word of this, any of it, do you understand me, girl?” He was brusque, substantial in the authority he carried, the pride and history of the uniform he wore.